Two armies at odds
by Nilaos
Summary: A short one-shot between two fictional armies of my own creation. Set before Ender attends battleschool. Rated T for non-lethal combat, and language.


As they jogged eagerly through the corridors towards the Battleroom, fresh with excitement for another battle with Tiger army, their fierce rival. This continuing rivalry was well known throughout Battleschool and on their way, their commander, Vincente Rojas, thought back to where it had started, with Tiger Army's commander, Michi Lin. They had both graduated to commanders around the same time, and had been close friends, in the same toon even, until they each got a toon, despite their vast differences and attitudes. Vincente was more independent, and aggressive, with only a little caution, he was however very charismatic and could be said to be the foundation for the toon's great camaraderie. Michi was quite different, almost a polar opposite. He was extremely cautious, almost to the point of paranoia in combat and always thought each move through, as well as any possible reactions to it before he moved. Yet despite this, they became great friends, and could do much when they rarely worked together, which caused great terror throughout the school as they became known for their sense of 'humour'. The first time they had a battle against each other as commanders, in the merciless environment known as Battleschool, it was very even, with Tiger Army winning in a pyrrhic victory. Over the year so far, they had battled a good many times, with the close results always changing as they adapted. So far neither had had a strong win over the other. Vincente wanted that to change now.

Eventually, Panther army arrived at the Battleroom, having organised themselves into their toons as they jogged through the clean white corridors to there, following their colour code of black-green-black, as Tiger army was undoubtably doing in their corridor. When all of his army had arrived, warmed up from the jog there and eager. He turned to them and addressed them:

"OK, everyone, I won't mince words, as we don't have much time. But in general, we've put in a lot of training and learnt lot from last time, and WE WILL WIN THIS TIME! Come on! 1, 2, 3, PANTHER!"

While all this was happening though, the clock kept ticking on relentlessly, counting the second onwards until 10am, when the match was scheduled to start. On the other side, Vincente thought, Michi was likely doing something similar to what he was doing before the battle. Finally the clock reached 10am, and the end of the corridor became transparent, though from experience everyone knew it was only one-way transparency. Once inside, they would be unable to see the corridor.

The Battleroom this time was simple &amp; symmetrical, with a hexagon of 7 stars at each end, a bit in front of the gate.

"Hmmm..., I see. Toon 1, go to the top stars, 2, to the middle stars, 3, to the lower stars. Toon 4, stay behind the stars and spread out. All other toons, use the stars as cover to fire."

Panther army responded quickly, their extra training showing in their fluid, coordinated motions as toons to follow his starting orders.

In the small-ish battlerooms, combined tactical manoeuvring was key, and he had trained his toons and toon leaders in that regard. They would act and give orders independently to their toons, but also knew each other well enough to semi-anticipate what they would do. However, at this point in time, all they needed to do was encourage their toon and point out spots to watch for 'Tigers'. If a large number were showing their heads, it was likely because they were going to do a 'Zerg rush', although where Michi had found that term (he said it was from an old game series called 'StarCraft') no one knew. It seemed to involve charging en masse at your enemy, and he didn't see much sense in doing so, as you would likely take heavy casualties, however, in tight, enclosed spaces like the — Battleroom — it was very effective, as you couldn't run further than the back wall.

The battle so far was turning out like most others the two armies had had so far: each side would take potshots at each other from cover and maybe get a hit once or twice. A few others would occasionally take peeps at the other side, to hopefully see how many of them were frozen. As usual, those who were frozen usually took hits as well, something that stopped people from playing dead a long time ago. The battle continued like this for an unknown amount of minutes (everyone was in the increased state of awareness of combat), with both armies taking casualties, though to appear stronger, they didn't leave them to float away, Panther army using them as personal shields and tiger army doing who knew what with them - maybe using them as decoys. So far, Panther had had 4 frozen and another few partially. Vincente had no idea how many they had frozen in Tiger army, but it seemed to be a few more than those in his army. He hoped he was right in that regard.

And so the battle continued, with more casualties on each side, though Vincente thought his army still had received less than Tiger, hopefully due to the intense training they had gone through since then. However, he still ended up losing what amounted to a whole toon and a half again, nearly 40% of his forces. Evidently, however, Michi thought that he had lost more than he had, likely thinking that he was seeing through the deception, when in fact, Vincente had a reserve force. The evidence of this what he was seeing now. Michi was attacking, in his usual style. A 'zerg' rush. This time, though, he was making it difficult, it seemed. he was hiding his non-frozen forces behind his frozen ones, using them as shields for the barely coordinated attack (the only noticeable coordination was the word 'go!').

As the 'swarm' approached, Vincente started ordering his toons. 1st, 2nd and 3rd toons would keep their heads down, while 4th toon, his reserve, would slide along the walls, legs first, then jump onto some of the impromptu shields and freeze the ones hiding behind them, then use them to jump off and repeat this tactic on other boys, while trying not to be hit.

As his toons began to move to do as he ordered, Vincente joined in the suppressive fire on the main enemy force. In short order, many of them were pinned down, and some started to go silent, with people in Panther army flash suits jumping between them, though it appeared that some of the Tiger army attack force had noticed, and were starting to fire back, but, like Vincente had thought, Michi wouldn't think of a group coming in and attacking his attack force at close range, and as such didn't train his toons for it. It took them completely by surprise.

However, it seemed this wasn't the end. Suddenly, some flashes began to strobe from the stars at the other end. It seemed that there were still some left. However, their main force frozen, they were rather few, though they still got some freezes. It seemed the battle had come through to its climax, now.

"It's time!" Vincente shouted to his army "Time for the attack!"

Almost as one Panther army responded, using the handholds on the walls and the stars to launch themselves in a fast-moving wave, battle cries resounding throughout the room as they swarmed towards the enemy stars.

However, just because of the swarming assault, it didn't mean that Tiger army was going down without a fight. After all, that would be just dumb, not to mention boring. And a big wave like this presented many easy targets, although it also meant that there would be a lot of return fire. However, this only lasted until the attack wave reached the stars. Then it was all over, with Tiger army outnumbered and surrounded by the remains of the attack wave, those who hadn't already made a run for the gate at least. In a short while longer, it was all over.

* * *

As you probably noticed, this is a one-shot between two OC armies at battleschool, pre-Ender. I hope you all enjoyed this, as it is my first story on FFN. Please review. Constructive criticism welcomed, however flames are not. Thank you for reading.


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